The Voice Before the Desert

“And Jesus, when He was baptized, went up straightway out of the water. And lo, a voice from heaven, saying, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” — Marv. iii. 16. 17. ‘Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness.” — Mart. iv. 1.

JESUS is called the Man of Sorrows, and such He was; yet it was not by His sorrows that

He redeemed the world; it was by His flashes of joy. Before He took any cross He had always a gleam of sunshine. That which enabled Him to bear the cross was not His resignation; it was His gladness. I have been greatly struck with the present illustration of the principle. He was about to go into a wilderness — a place of solitude. What was to be His safeguard there? The spirit of submission? The resignation to calamity? The sense of life’s inherent misery? The resolve not to be eclipsed by the

Stoic? Not one of these. His safeguard in the coming solitude was to be a voice — the remembrance of a companionship. It was that which was to enable Him to bear the loneliness, And it is ever so in the leading of our Father. When you and I get into the desert and refuse to cry, what keeps us from tears is not simple fortitude; it is the possession of an unconquered joy. No man would be able to endure the desert of to-day if it were not for the voices of yesterday. I believe that any one grief would be sufficient to kill a man if it were the only thing in the world. Did you ever ask yourself why so many people under the shadow do not die. It is because the shadow covers only part of the man. There is always a little bit of the body in the light. What keeps me from succumbing to any sorrow is the sunshine on the other side of the street. If it were not for that the habitual form of death would be a broken heart.

I thank Thee, O Lord, that I am not sent into the wilderness till I have gathered joy. I thank Thee that I bring streams with me into the desert. I often say that I have found streams in the desert. Yet, in truth, my Father, it is I who have brought them there. I was so intent on other things that I was unconscious of their existence. But when the shadow hid the other things I began to hear a murmur, and looking round, I beheld the streams. They came not from my desert; they came from something unconquered by my desert. They were the waters I tasted before starting — tasted almost mechanically, without observation. But I thank Thee for them now.- It is not in the baptismal moment that I know the good of the waters; it is in the hour of the desert. The streams are underground till the desert comes. It is written, “There is laid up for me a crown of glory.” Methinks all our crowns are “laid up for us” — kept hid till the desert hour. I am quite unconscious to-day how much Thy streams are refreshing me; but I shall know to-morrow. I shall find to-day’s water-brooks in to-morrow’s wilderness. I shall meet Cana at Calvary, Bethlehem at Bethany, Jordan at Jerusalem. I shall find Thy gems in the broken casket, Thine ointment in the shattered box, Thy songs in the midnight air. Only in the silence of the desert hour shall I recognise the Voice that has been singing since the morning.